James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century. His historical romances draw a picture of frontier and American Indian life in the early American days which created a unique form of
American literature. He lived most of his life in
Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William on property that he owned. Cooper was a lifelong member of the
Episcopal Church and contributed generously to it.[1] He attended
Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the
Linonian Society.[2]

Shortly after James' first birthday, his family moved to
Cooperstown, New York, a community founded by his father on a large piece of land which he had bought for development. Later, his father was elected to the
United States Congress as a representative from Otsego County. Their town was in a central area of New York along the headwaters of the
Susquehanna River that had previously been patented to Colonel George Croghan by the Province of New York in 1769. Coghan mortgaged the land before the Revolution and after the war part of the tract was sold at public auction to William Cooper and his partner Andrew Craig.[5] By 1788, William Cooper had selected and surveyed the site where Cooperstown would be established. He erected a home on the shore of Otsego lake and moved his family there in the autumn of 1790. He soon began construction of the mansion that became known as Otsego Hall, completed in 1799 when James was ten.[6]

At 20, Cooper inherited a fortune from his father. He married Susan Augusta de Lancey at
Mamaroneck, Westchester County, New York on January 1, 1811 at age 21.[10] She was from a wealthy family who remained
loyal to Great Britain during the Revolution. The Coopers had seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood. Their daughter
Susan Fenimore Cooper was a writer on nature, female suffrage, and other topics. She and her father often edited each other's work.[11] Among his descendants was
Paul Fenimore Cooper (1899–1970), who also became a writer.[12]

Service in the Navy

In 1806 at the age of 17, Cooper joined the crew of the merchant ship Sterling as a common sailor. At the time, the Sterling was commanded by young John Johnston from Maine. Cooper served as a common seaman
before the mast. His first voyage took some 40 stormy days at sea and brought him to an English market in
Cowes with a cargo of flour. There Cooper saw his first glimpses of England. The Sterling passed through the
Strait of Dover and arrived at
Cowes, where she dropped anchor. Britain was in the midst of
war with Napoleon's France at the time, so their ship was immediately approached by a British
man-of-war and was boarded by some of its crew. They seized one of the Sterling's best crew members and
impressed him into the
British Royal Navy.[13][14][note 1]

Their next voyage took them to the Mediterranean along the coast of Spain, including
Águilas and
Cabo de Gata, where they picked up cargo to be taken back to America. Their stay in Spain lasted several weeks and impressed the young sailor, the accounts of which Cooper later referred to in his Mercedes of Castile, a novel about
Columbus.[16]

After serving aboard the Sterling for 11 months, Cooper joined the
United States Navy on January 1, 1808, when he received his commission as a
midshipman. Cooper had conducted himself well as a sailor, and his father, a former U.S. Congressman, easily secured a commission for him through his long-standing connections with politicians and naval officials.[17][18] The warrant for Cooper's commission as midshipman was signed by President Jefferson and mailed by Naval Secretary
Robert Smith, reaching Cooper on February 19. Along with the warrant was a copy of naval rules and regulations, a description of the required naval uniform, along with an oath that Cooper was to sign in front of a witness and to be returned with his letter of acceptance. Cooper signed the oath and had it notarized by New York attorney William Williams, Jr., who had previously certified the Sterling's crew. After Williams had confirmed Cooper's signature, Cooper mailed the document to Washington. On February 24, he received orders to report to the naval commander at New York City.[note 2] Joining the United States Navy fulfilled an aspiration Cooper had had since his youth.[19]

Cooper's first naval assignment came in March 21, 1808 aboard the
USS Vesuvius, an 82-foot
bomb ketch that carried twelve
guns and a thirteen-inch
mortar.[20] For his next assignment, Cooper served under Lieutenant
Melancthon Taylor Woolsey near
Oswego on
Lake Ontario, building the brig
USS Oneida for service on the lake. The vessel was intended for use in a
war with Great Britain which had yet to begin.[21] The vessel was completed, armed with sixteen guns, and launched in Lake Ontario in the spring of 1809. It was in this service that Cooper learned shipbuilding, shipyard duties, and frontier life. During his leisure time, Cooper would venture through the forests of New York state and explore the shores of Lake Ontario. He took frequent cruises among the
Thousand Islands where he spent time fishing. His experiences in the Oswego area later inspired some of his work, including his novel The Pathfinder.[22][note 3]

After completion of the Oneida in 1809, Cooper accompanied Woolsey to
Niagara Falls, and was then ordered to
Lake Champlain to serve aboard a
gunboat until the winter months when the lake froze over. On November 13 of the same year, he was assigned to the
USS Wasp under the command of Captain
James Lawrence, who was from Burlington and a personal friend of Cooper's. Aboard this ship, Cooper met his lifelong friend
William Branford Shubrick, who was also a midshipman at the time. Cooper later dedicated The Pilot, The Red Rover, and other writings to Shubrick.[24][25]

Writings

First endeavors

In 1820, Cooper's wife Susan wagered that he could write a book better than the one that she was reading. In response to the wager, Cooper wrote the novel Precaution (1820). Its focus on morals and manners was influenced by
Jane Austen's approach to fiction. He anonymously published Precaution and it received favorable notice from the United States and England.[26] By contrast, his second novel The Spy (1821) was inspired by a tale related to him by neighbor and family friend
John Jay. It was more successful and became a bestseller; the setting of this Revolutionary War tale is widely believed to have been John Jay's family home "The Locusts" in
Rye, New York.[27] In 1823, Cooper published The Pioneers, the first of the
Leatherstocking series. The series features
Natty Bumppo, a resourceful American woodsman at home with the
Delaware Indians and their chief Chingachgook. Bumppo was also the main character of Cooper's most famous novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826), written in New York City where Cooper and his family lived from 1822 to 1826. The book became one of the most widely read American novels of the 19th century.[28]

In 1823, Cooper was living in New York on Beach Street in what is now downtown's Tribeca. While there, he became a member of the Philadelphia Philosophical Society. In August of that year, his first son died.[29]

In 1824, General Lafayette arrived from France aboard the Cadmus at
Castle Garden in New York City as the nation's guest. Cooper witnessed his arrival and was one of the active committee of welcome and entertainment.[30][31]

Europe

In 1826, Cooper moved his family to Europe,[32] where he sought to gain more income from his books as well as to provide better education for his children. While overseas, he continued to write. His books published in Paris include The Red Rover and The Water Witch, two of his many sea stories. During his time in Paris, the Cooper family was seen[by whom?] as the center of the small American expatriate community. During this time, he developed friendships with painter
Samuel Morse and with French general and American Revolutionary War hero
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.[33][34]

In 1832, Cooper entered the lists as a political writer in a series of letters to Le National, a Parisian journal. He defended the United States against a string of charges brought by the Revue Britannique. For the rest of his life, he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and frequently for both at once.[citation needed]

This opportunity to make a political confession of faith reflected the political turn that he already had taken in his fiction, having attacked European anti-republicanism in The Bravo (1831). Cooper continued this political course in The Heidenmauer (1832) and The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron (1833). The Bravo depicted
Venice as a place where a ruthless
oligarchy lurks behind the mask of the "serene republic". All were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, though The Bravo was a critical failure in the United States.[35]

Back to America

In 1833, Cooper returned to the United States and published A Letter to My Countrymen in which he gave his criticism of various social mores. Promotional material from his publisher indicated that:

A Letter To My Countrymen remains Cooper's most trenchant work of social criticism. In it, he defines the role of the "man of letters" in a republic, the true conservative, the slavery of party affiliations, and the nature of the legislative branch of government. He also offers her most persuasive argument on why America should develop its own art and literary culture, ignoring the aristocratically and monarchically tainted art of Europe.[37]

Cooper sharply censured his compatriots for their share in it. He followed up with novels and several sets of notes on his travels and experiences in Europe. His Homeward Bound and Home as Found are notable for containing a highly idealized self-portrait.

In June 1834, Cooper decided to reopen his ancestral mansion
Otsego Hall at Cooperstown. It had long been closed and falling into decay; he had been absent from the mansion nearly 16 years. Repairs were begun, and the house was put in order. At first, he wintered in New York City and summered in Cooperstown, but eventually he made Otsego Hall his permanent home.[38]

On May 10, 1839, Cooper published History of the Navy of the United States of America, a work that he had long planned on writing. He publicly announced his intentions to author such a historical work while abroad before departing for Europe in May 1826, during a parting speech at a dinner given in his honor:

Encouraged by your kindness, ... I will take this opportunity of recording the deeds and sufferings of a class of men to which this nation owes a debt of gratitude – a class of men among whom, I am always ready to declare, not only the earliest, but many of the happiest days of my youth have been passed.[39]

Historical and nautical work

His historical account of the U.S. Navy was first well received but later harshly criticized in America and abroad. It took Cooper 14 years to research and gather material for the book. His close association with the U.S. Navy and various officers, and his familiarity with naval life at sea provided him the background and connections to research and write this work. Cooper's work is said to have stood the test of time and is considered an authoritative account of the U.S. Navy during that time.[40]

In 1844, Cooper's Proceedings of the naval court martial in the case of
Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a commander in the navy of the United States, &c:, was first published in Graham's Magazine of 1843–44. It was a review of the court martial of
Alexander Slidell Mackenzie who had hanged three crew members of the brig
USS Sommers for mutiny while at sea. One of the hanged men, 19-year-old Philip Spencer, was the son of
U.S. Secretary of WarJohn C. Spencer. He was executed without court-martial along with two other sailors aboard the Somers for allegedly attempting mutiny. Prior to this affair, Cooper was in the process of giving harsh review to Mackenzie's version of the
Battle of Lake Erie. Mackenzie had previously given harsh criticism to Cooper's interpretation of the
Battle of Lake Erie contained in Cooper's History of the Navy of the United States, 1839. However, he still felt sympathetic to Mackenzie over his pending court martial.[41][42]

In 1846, Cooper published Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers covering the biographies of Commodores
William Bainbridge,
Richard Somers,
John Shaw,
William Shubrick, and
Edward Preble.[43][44] Cooper died in 1851.[45] In May 1853, Cooper's Old Ironsides appeared in Putnam's Monthly. It was the history of the Navy ship USS Constitution and became the first posthumous publication of his writings.[46] In 1856, five years after Cooper's death, his History of the Navy of the United States of America was published. The work was an account of the U.S. Navy in the early 19th century.[40][47] Among naval historians of today, the work has come to be recognized as a general and authoritative account. However, it was criticized for accuracy on some points by other students of that period. For example, Cooper's account of the
Battle of Lake Erie was said to be less than accurate by some naval historians. For making such claims, Cooper once sued
Park Benjamin, Sr. for libel, a poet and editor of the Evening Signal of New York.[48]

Critical reaction

Cooper's books related to current
politics, coupled with his self-promotion, increased the ill feeling between the author and the public. The
Whig press was virulent in its comments about him, and Cooper filed legal actions for
libel, winning all his lawsuits.

After concluding his last case in court, Cooper returned to writing with more energy and success than he'd had for several years. On May 10, 1839, he published his History of the U.S. Navy,[40] and returned to the Leatherstocking Tales series with The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841) and other novels. He wrote again on maritime themes, including Ned Myers, or A Life Before the Mast, which is of particular interest to naval historians.

In the late 1840s, Cooper returned to his public attacks on his critics and enemies in a series of novels called the Littlepage Trilogy where he defended landowners along the Hudson River, lending them social and political support against rebellious tenant farmers in the
anti-rent wars that marked this period. One of his later novels was The Crater, an allegory of the rise and fall of the United States, authored in 1848. His growing sense of historical doom was exemplified in this work. At the end of his career, he wrote a scornful satire about American social life and legal practices called The Ways of the Hour, authored in 1850.[citation needed]

Later life

He turned again from pure
fiction to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction with the Littlepage Manuscripts (1845–1846). His next novel was The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce
supernatural machinery. Jack Tier (1848) was a remaking of The Red Rover, and The Ways of the Hour was his last completed novel.[49]

Cooper spent the last years of his life back in Cooperstown. He died on September 14, 1851, the day before his 62nd birthday. He was buried in the Christ Episcopal Churchyard, where his father,
William Cooper, was buried. Cooper's wife Susan survived her husband only by a few months and was buried by his side at Cooperstown.

Several well-known writers, politicians, and other public figures honored Cooper's memory with a dinner in New York, six months after his death, in February 1852.
Daniel Webster presided over the event and gave a speech to the gathering while
Washington Irving served as a co-chairman, along with
William Cullen Bryant, who also gave an address which did much to restore Cooper's damaged reputation among American writers of the time.[50][51]

Religious activities

Beginning in his youth Cooper was a devoted follower of the
Episcopal Church where his religious convictions deepened throughout his life. He was an active member of Christ Episcopal Church, which at the time was a small parish in Cooperstown not far from his home. Much later in his life, in 1834, he became its warden and
vestryman. As the vestryman, he donated generously to this church and later supervised and redesigned its interior with oak furnishings at his own expense. In July 1851 he was
confirmed in this church by the Reverend Mr. Birdsall.[52][53][54]

Legacy

Cooper was one of the most popular 19th-century American authors, and his work was admired greatly throughout the world. While on his death bed, the Austrian composer
Franz Schubert wanted most to read more of Cooper's novels.[55]Honoré de Balzac, the French novelist and playwright, admired him greatly.[56]Henry David Thoreau, while attending Harvard, incorporated some of Cooper's style in his own work.[57]D. H. Lawrence believed that Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Maupassant, and Flaubert were all "so very obvious and coarse, besides the lovely, mature and sensitive art of Fennimore Cooper." Lawrence called Deerslayer "one of the most beautiful and perfect books in the world: flawless as a jewel and of gem-like concentration."[58]

Cooper's work, particularly The Pioneers and The Pilot, demonstrate an early 19th-century American preoccupation with alternating prudence and negligence in a country where property rights were often still in dispute.[59]

Cooper was one of the first major American novelists to include African, African-American and Native American characters in his works. In particular, Native Americans play central roles in his
Leatherstocking tales. However, his treatment of this group is complex and highlights the tenuous relationship between frontier settlers and American Indians as exemplified in The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, depicting a captured white girl who is taken care of by an Indian chief and who after several years is eventually returned to her parents.[60] Often, he gives contrasting views of Native characters to emphasize their potential for good, or conversely, their proclivity for mayhem. Last of the Mohicans includes both the character of Magua, who is devoid of almost any redeeming qualities, as well as Chingachgook, the last chief of the Mohicans, who is portrayed as noble, courageous, and heroic.[61] In 1831, Cooper was elected into the
National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician.

According to
Tad Szulc, Cooper was a devotee of Poland's causes (uprisings to regain Polish sovereignty). He brought flags of the defeated Polish rebel regiment from Warsaw and presented them to the exiled leaders in Paris. And although Cooper and Marquis de La Fayette were friends, it remains unclear how Cooper found himself in Warsaw at that historical moment, although he was an active supporter of European democratic movements.[62]

Though some scholars have hesitated to classify Cooper as a strict Romantic,
Victor Hugo pronounced him greatest novelist of the century outside France.[56] Honoré de Balzac, while mocking a few of Cooper's novels ("rhapsodies") and expressing reservations about his portrayal of characters, enthusiastically called The Pathfinder a masterpiece and professed great admiration for Cooper's portrayal of nature, only equalled in his view by Walter Scott.[63]Mark Twain famously criticized The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder in his satirical but shrewdly observant essay, "
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895),[64] which portrays Cooper's writing as clichéd and overwrought.

Cooper was also criticized heavily for his depiction of women characters in his work.
James Russell Lowell, Cooper's contemporary and a critic, referred to it poetically in A Fable for Critics, writing, "... the women he draws from one model don't vary / All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie."[65]

Cooper's lasting reputation today rests largely upon the five Leatherstocking tales. As for the remaining body of his work, literary scholar
Leslie Fiedler notes that Cooper's "collected works are monumental in their cumulative dullness."[66]

Cooper was honored on a U.S. commemorative stamp, the Famous American series, issued in 1940

Cooper was honored on a U.S. commemorative stamp, the Famous American series, issued in 1940.

Three dining halls at the
State University of New York at Oswego are named in Cooper's remembrance (Cooper Hall, The Pathfinder, and Littlepage) because of his temporary residence in Oswego and for setting some of his works there.[67]

The gilded and red tole chandelier hanging in the library of the White House in Washington DC is from the family of James Fenimore Cooper.[68] It was brought there through the efforts of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in her great White House restoration. The James Fenimore Cooper Memorial Prize at
New York University is awarded annually to an outstanding undergraduate student of journalism.[69]

Cooper's novels were very popular in the rest of the world, including, for instance, Russia. In particular, great interest of the Russian public in Cooper's work was primarily incited by the novel The Pathfinder, which the renowned Russian literary critic
Vissarion Belinsky declared to be "a Shakespearean drama in the form of a novel".[70] The author was more recognizable by his middle name, Fenimore, exotic to many in Russia. This name became a symbol of exciting adventures among Russian readers. For example, in the 1977 Soviet movie The Secret of Fenimore (
Russian: Тайна Фенимора), being the third part of a children's television mini-series Three Cheerful Shifts (
Russian: Три весёлые смены, see
Tri vesyolye smeny (1977) on
IMDb ), tells of a mysterious stranger known as Fenimore, visiting a boys' dorm in a summer camp nightly and relating fascinating stories about
Indians and extraterrestrials.

^Records of the government or Department of Navy provide little information regarding Cooper's movements and activities in the Navy. Knowledge of Cooper's life comes primarily from what he divulged in his published works, notes, and letters of that period.[23]

^Hicks, Paul,"The Spymaster and the Author," The Rye Record, December 7, 2014. "Archived copy". Archived from
the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved March 22, 2015.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (
link)

^See Fowler, 'Modern English Usage,' Mencken 'The American Language.' 'Crockford's Clerical Directory,' or 1969 ed. 'American Heritage Dictionary' for the correct use of the adjective "reverend." It is to be used exactly as the adjective "honorable" is used. One would not call Judge John Smith "the Honorable Smith."

^Vissarion Belinsky (1841).
Разделение поэзии на роды и виды [The Division of Poetry into Genera and Species] (text). Retrieved 2014-02-28. (In English: Cooper is here deep interpreter of the human heart, a great painter of the world of the soul, like Shakespeare. Definitely and clearly he uttered the unspeakable, reconciled and merged together internal and external — and his "The Pathfinder" is a Shakespearean drama in the form of the novel, the only creature in this way, having nothing equal with him, the triumph of modern art in the epic poetry.)